Busy lives. Stressful jobs. A frantic pace even with entertainment. Clearly, we could use a Sabbath rest and Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Finding Delight in our Busy Lives did a marvelously creative job of detailing the many forms of rest.

Yet as we look at Luther's explanation to the Third Commandment, we notice that he doesn't mention rest. Maybe, given the mostly rural and religious nature of the culture he lived in, finding rest on holy days wasn't much a problem. There probably were many holy days, many opportunities for Sabbath. Certainly Sunday was a strictly enforced "day of rest."

But maybe he focused on something other than rest because he saw some more than only our need. Awed by God, he discerned that the Sabbath commandment was about hearing God's Word. Or, to put it another way, Sabbath was about a relationship with God that implied listening.

And this listening was not for some inner voice or some mystical experience, but was the more mundane thing of going to public worship and sitting through a sermon. Remember, in his day, virtually everyone was illiterate, so it wasn't like the common people could sit around reading their Bibles. Not only could they not read, there were no Bibles around any way!

Even after all these centuries, this thing still remains: the discipline of listening to the Word read by lectors and preached by a pastor in the sermon in public worship. Plain ordinary stuff. But notice what a communal or corporate event that is. Doesn't it say something remarkable about the human condition that, for the good of our soul and of the community, we sit and listen together? Rich or poor, smart or dull, classy or plain, it doesn't matter. We're all just humans who are designed by our creator for relationship. Instead of always talking at God with our laundry list of needs, doesn't a vital relationship mean that once in a while we actually try to listen and hear (internalize) what God has to say?

At worship we become one big ear, listening for the voice of God. Luther is saying, Remember to keep that holy!